


Perchance to Dream

by wombuttress



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Gen, Heartwarming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 11:15:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8487223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wombuttress/pseuds/wombuttress
Summary: Six brand new Wardens in a big drafty castle means a lot of nightmares, and when it's dark and cold and the monsters are coming, what's the point of sleeping in separate rooms?Tabris builds a life.





	

Warden-Commander Tabris didn’t sleep much. Maybe it was something to do with the expensive Par Vollen coffee that Sten kept sending her, or perhaps simply the heavy weight of the duties of the Commander of the Grey. She went to bed later than most everyone in the Keep, and rose earlier. She was a light sleeper, and generally woke several times in the night—and if she woke up and it was past dawn, the thoughts of the coming day’s events would generally make further sleep impossible.

These late nights she spent in the vestibule attached to the main hall. There was a fireplace there, and a little desk. She could practice writing there. She might as well, given that there was no warm body in her bed to go back to, and the business had to be learned. Writing practice was something she couldn’t do during the day, when there were a million things to be looked after in the crumbling Keep, so night work it was.

It was sometime past midnight when her ears pricked up. Footsteps. She waited in the dim light until the visitor appeared. He saw her, and jumped nearly a foot in the air at the dim glow of her eyes.

“Commander!” Anders said . “Didn’t see you there. Having a good night?”

“Hello, Anders,” she said, shoving her writing materials and messily scrawled practice words out of the way. He was half-dressed, missing all his jewelry, hair mussed. “Trouble sleeping?”

“You could say that,” he muttered, moving closer to the fire.

“Darkspawn dreams?” She nodded. “Those will happen.”

“You’re kidding me—those are normal?”

“Afraid so. But don’t worry, they’ll get better. Mine were awful at first, since I was recruited at the beginning of the Blight. Huge bloody dragon screaming in my ear every night. Annoying stuff.” She paused. “But it’s not so bad now.”

“Ugh. Well, thank the Maker for that, at least.

She watched him stare into the fire for a while. “Alright there?” she said eventually.

“Fine, fine,” he said. “Just, uh, not very eager to be asleep. Or alone. What are you doing up?”

“Nothing,” Tabris said quickly, shoving the parchment further under the book she was using, flipping it cover-down. “Just considering the heavy burdens of leadership. Don’t you know all Commanders spend a certain amount of time brooding by the fire?”

“Oh, obviously. I see you’re getting the right hang of it, then.” He laughed, but too nervously.

Tabris vacated her chair and sat next to him by the fire. “We could talk.”

“Hah. You’re really not sick of me talking yet?” He glanced at her. “But…yeah, thanks. That would be…good.”

\--

Anders startled awake. He found himself on the floor, but not on the floor of a barn he’d broken into to sleep, or the home of some generous peasant that accepted healing in the form of payment. He was…at his new home. And the person he was sprawled awkwardly next to was the Warden-Commander. Who, apparently, snored like a druffalo. It was a little impressive, how such a large sound could emanate from such a small woman.

They must have fallen asleep on the floor. Suddenly, he was seized by a paranoia—he really didn’t want his new start here ruined by accidentally canoodling with his Commander. He moved away. Tabris’s head thunked on the floor, causing her to wake and swear colorfully.

“Sorry, Commander,” he said, scrambling up

“It’s Tabris,” she said irritably. She rubbed her eyes and yawned. “Any more dreams?”

He shook his head. “Not tonight.”

“Well, good. Looks like it worked.” She nodded curtly, straightened her clothing, and marched off to mess for breakfast.

Breakfast was a lonely affair, with a grand total of three wardens,  the Seneschal and the advisors, all sitting at the edge of the long wooden table meant for dozens. But after the previous night, it felt perfectly homey. Homier than the overcrowded group meals at Kinloch had been, with watchful Templars ringing the edges of dining hall.

The dreams didn’t go away, although some nights they weren’t so bad. Truthfully it wasn’t the dreams so much as the dark that Anders feared. Monsters he could handle. Monsters were easy. But darkness, aloneness…

But Tabris, it seemed, was a creature of habit. She was always down by the fireplace, and she was always ready to listen

After a few nights of this, Anders stopped bothering going to his own bed, and Tabris had a plush rug laid in front of the fireplace.

\--

Nathaniel’s dreams were particularly bad. Darkspawn blood didn’t seem to agree with him. Apparently it had taken him a long stretch of hours to wake up, the Commander having kept a stone-faced vigil over him until the Seneschal pronounced that he would live.

Not that Nathaniel appreciated it. The Warden-Commander could descend from the heavens to rescue him from the pit of ravening wolves, and he’d still find a reason to despise her.

He was being petty, and he knew it, but he wasn’t letting that stop him.

Unfortunately, the Warden-Commander was placid as the still dawn, and his hatred broke upon her like waves upon fortress walls. She met his ranting with a neutral expression, an understanding hum, and occasionally, a little gift. It was mystifying.

His ire was only increased by the dreams he’d begun to have, ever since he’d been forced into this life of darkness and butchery. He hadn’t slept for more than a consecutive hour since his Joining, and it was taking its toll on him. He’d been reduced to a twitching, exhausted mess, hallucinating shapes in the corner of his vision.

He blamed the Commander. It was her who’d pressed him into this. He’d hissed as much to her that morning, even as she offered him some coffee and patted him on the elbow.

On the third night, he didn’t bother even trying to sleep, and stalked through the vast empty halls of Vigil’s Keep, aching at every familiar brick. Better to stay awake, he thought, blinking away the shadows just out of his sight. Maybe if he kept himself up for long enough, he’d drop dead and be done with this.

His midnight prowl lead him to the antechamber attached to the great hall, where a fire burned merrily in the grate. He peered inside, and the blurry blue shape resolved itself into the Commander. She sat at a desk, scratching away at something with a quill.

“You,” he muttered. She started, which gave him a bitter satisfaction.

“Quit lurking in the shadows,” she said. “You startled me.”

“Good.”

The Commander sighed and rubbed her eyes. “If you’re here to treat me to another venom-filled rant, do it quietly, please, or let’s go into the hall. Anders is asleep.”

“Anders is—what?” Nathaniel jerked his head around and sure enough, the mage was sprawled in front of the fire on truly atrocious rug (that had to be one of Aunt Greta’s), the tabby kitten was curled on his chest, purring audibly. He still didn’t understand the woman’s obsession with showering all her subordinates with presents. Did she think they were some kind of family?

Though they _were_ related by blood now, he thought acidly.

“What is he doing here?” he hissed lowly.

“Sleeping, what else?” Tabris rolled her eyes. After a moment, she added, “All new wardens have the dreams, you know.”

Sure they did, and Nathaniel’s were worse than anyone’s, debilitating bad, so bad that he was barely functioning. He’d been no good as a son, no good as a thief, and here he was, no good as a Grey Warden. What a ridiculous farce. He swayed where he stood.

Tabris frowned. “Perhaps you should sit down.”

He grit his teeth. “No.”

The Commander was silent a moment, her hands folded in her lap. Eventually she spoke. “You really hate me that much?”

The room spun. He was so tired. He leaned his head against the cool stone and felt his shoulders slump. “N-no,” he heard himself mumble. “Not you. I don’t…hate you, I just…”

He didn’t recall how he’d finished that sentence. Everything went black for a few moments. When he blinked again, the Commander was gently steering him to the rug and insistently laying a blanket around his shoulders.

“Sleep,” she said flatly. “That’s an order.” Then, an iota softer, “I’ll be here, should anything—I’ll be here.”

The world spun and tilted sideways, until there was something soft under his cheek and something warm at his back. He wasn’t sure if it was Anders or the fire, because his eyes were slipping closed.

Nathaniel slept.

He woke the next morning to a cat’s paw stepping on his face and the loud sound of the mage’s chewing, spraying him with crumbs as he offered him some toast.

\--

There were enough horrors in Velanna’s life that a few more hardly bothered her. Darkspawn, blood, claws and teeth raking across her mind like steel-tipped tree branches, in addition to the new memory of all that had occurred in the Silverite Mines—none of it mattered. Being a Warden would help her find her sister, so a Warden Velanna would be, and she would bear it as well as she had born everything else.

That is to say, furiously.

In truth, it was not the dreams so much as the walls that kept her from her bed. The cold stone, the greyness, the stink of shemlen…where was the sky? Where was the scent of sage and mint, brewed to keep nighttime insects away? Where was the sound of snuffling halla, the creaking of the aravels in the wind?

None of those things had been part of her life for months, and yet, they seemed further away now than ever.

She was not adjusting.

The barefaced Warden-Commander found her sitting in the dying grass outside the walls.

Velanna didn’t acknowledge her. The Commander sat down in the grass next to her.

After a while, she said, “You know it’s raining, right?”

“Yes,” Velanna said stiffly. “How could I not? It’s falling on my face, is it not?”

“Just checking,” Tabris said mildly. “I was only wondering where you were.”

Velanna snorted. “Thought I’d run off, did you? What, were you going round checking everyone’s beds?”

Tabris said nothing, so they listened to the plunking of the raindrops for a while.

“You don’t understand,” Velanna said eventually, no longer able to stand it. “You grew up behind walls, surrounded by shemlen.  You’re used to this. I’m not. It’s all so unnatural to me.”

Tabris hummed. Just when Velanna was sure she would speak no more, she said,  “My mother was Dalish, you know. She told me all sorts of stories from her old life. I used to dream of leaving the walls behind, joining a Dalish clan. Maybe even the clan my mother had come from.” She paused. “I never did find out why she left it.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Velanna snapped, suddenly uncomfortable.

Tabris raised her hands in surrender. “Just rambling.”

Velanna shivered. The cold water was chilling her to the bone, settling somewhere so deep within her she feared she would never be able to extract it.

“What kind of stories?” she said finally.

“Oh, I don’t know…fables, legends, myths. In hindsight, I think she must have made a lot of them up for my benefit. They didn’t match any of the ones I heard later. You’re right, you know, about how much we’ve lost.”

“Of course I’m right.”

“Of course.”

Velanna shivered again. Tabris glanced at her.

“How about,” she said, “we go inside and dry off, and you tell me a real Dalish legend? I didn’t get to hear many. Perhaps we’ll both sleep better.”

“Are you a child, to require bedtime stories?”

It occurred to Velanna suddenly that the Commander must have been quite young. No more than twenty, despite all her scars. Younger than herself. Younger than Seranni . “Very well,” she added lamely. “Let us go.”

The Commander stood. “Good,” she said. “There’s a fire burning inside.”

\--

Sigrun made one attempt at sleeping, woke within the hour, and decided not to do it again.

Well. _That_ was new. Better uniforms, hot food, a private room—that was nice, but the dreams were really something. She’d never even had a dream before, and her first one was like this? That was just unfair.

But she couldn’t complain. The Commander had been so kind to her. Kinder than she deserved. Nobody had ever talked to her like that, like she was worth the world, or showered her in gifts, or threatened to get her a new pet nug—Sigrun really hoped she wasn’t serious about that one. That would have been _too_ much.

But the Commander was like that with everyone. That made it easier to understand. It wasn’t in anything about _her,_ it was just how Tabris was…though Sigrun could imagine the vehement denial that expressing that sentiment would have gotten.

She ambled around the Keep, getting to know her new temporary home, when she saw the orange light bouncing off the stones. She took one look at the atrium, grinned, and flopped down in the middle, right between Nathaniel and Velanna. This had the minor side effect of waking them.

“Hey, this is great,” she said, ignoring the grumbling. “I didn’t know Grey Wardens did sleepovers.”

“This is not a sleepover,” Velanna muttered, throwing an arm across her eyes to block the light. “This is just…a convenience.”

“Right. It’s just a big friendly cuddle pile.”

“We’re not cuddling!” Nathaniel protested.

“Really? You should let Anders know, then.”

Nathaniel swore softly and tried to extricate himself from the mage’s arms. “He always does this,” he muttered. “He thrashes around all night, too.”

“Maybe it isn’t as coincidental as you keep claiming, then,” Velanna said smugly.

Nathaniel gave up on escaping Anders’ sleeping grasp. “Then tomorrow you can sleep next to him.”

“I think it’s cute,” Sigrun said.

“Could you _please,”_ Velanna said, “stop using me as a pillow? Pillows and blankets are over there in the corner.”

There were indeed a great quantity of pillows and blankets in the corner of the little room. Feathery white ones, simple canvas ones, fancy embroidered ones, thin blankets, thick blankets, various cushions…it looked as though someone had raided the entire Keep for cushions.

There was brief silence.

“Have you guys ever thought of building a fort out of all of these?” Sigrun whispered.

Velanna groaned loudly. Anders mumbled something in his sleep. Ser Pounce-a-Lot purred. After a while, Nathaniel thoughtfully said, “You know, that does sound pretty fun.”

“Nathaniel!” Velanna said exasperatedly.

“I think,” the Warden-Commander suddenly groused, the scratching of her quill pen ceasing sharply, “That you should all go to sleep before I start assigning extra patrols. Welcome, Sigrun. Make yourself comfortable. Glad to have you. Now good _night.”_

The way she spoke, it was like an ironclad truth. Glad to have you…nobody had ever been glad to have her. It was so odd. But the Warden-Commander really was glad to have them, glad to have Sigrun. She wasn’t sure she was ever going to wrap her head around that one, so instead, she slept.

\--

“They sure are cute when they’re asleep,” Oghren remarked. “Cuter than when they’re talking, anyway.”

Tabris smirked. “Ain’t they just? No arguing, no sniping, no puns…just blessed silence. Puts my heart at ease.”

Oghren took a swig of something without a label, and passed it to Tabris. Writing practice was going horribly tonight. She couldn’t seem to make a single letter formed correctly. She sloshed the amber liquid around the blue-glass bottle and took a swig, then frowned. “You should really quit drinking, Oghren.”

“No can do, Commander.” He took the bottle back. “I’m more than half liquor. If I quit it, I’d waste away to nothing. You’d get less’n half a warden when you paid for a whole one.”

“I didn’t pay for you. If I had, I’d return you and buy more flasks.”

Oghren swore under his breath. “Bleeding Stone, you don’t need any more flasks.”

“You never know, Oghren!” Tabris, who had filled an entire vault of the Keep with nothing but extra empty flasks, said seriously. “You  never know!”

“Bah. I s’pose it’s better that you have somewhere to put them now, instead of hauling them all over the bleedin’ countryside.”

“Bodahn didn’t mind.”

They sat in silence for a little while.

“Can’t sleep, Warden?”

“You can’t call me that anymore. We’re both Wardens now.”

“Too right we are. The drink was one thing, but the hangover’s lasted me weeks now.”

Tabris stared into the fire a moment. So much had happened over the past couple weeks. The rebellion, the massacre at the farm—not to mention the imposter Dark Wolf and all the drama with the smugglers. All these people looking to her, relying on her, willing to die for her, when not a year ago she’d been knife-eared scum. “Look, Oghren,” she said, “I just wanted to say—n’ not just because I’m drinking—that it…it really means a lot to me, you coming here and doing this with me. This Warden thing. I honestly have no idea what I’m doing and it’s good to, t’ see a friendly face—”

“Bah…save it, Warden. I know.”

At this point, Tabris became so embarrassed at this display that she had no choice but to finish the bottle, which set her head spinning so badly that she had to put both bottle and head down on the desk.

“Probably shouldn’t have done that,” Oghren said. “That was Garbolg’s Backcountry Reserve.”

“Oh…”

“Sleep it off, Warden. I’ll watch over them.”

\--

The room was not so quiet now as it had been when Tabris began to use it for late night work. Between the soft snoring (Velanna’s), the purring, the shifting, the loud snoring (Oghren’s), the crackling of the fire, and the howling wind outside the walls, Tabris could hardly concentrate. But she’d gotten good enough at the business not to need to concentrate too much.

She looked over the accounts, achingly pleased with the fact that she could read them. Here was Mistress Woolsey’s financial report on the newest renovations, the Silverite walls, and here was the latest order of blasting powder. She’d had the throne dragged out of the main hall, and was planning on replacing it with a fine oaken desk, but she would have to commission one, and the nearest carpenter was in Amaranthine. She couldn’t afford that trip any time soon. She’d have to send a missive.

She could have just as easily gotten a scribe or the Seneschal to do it for her, but she wanted to do it herself. Vigil’s Keep had become hers, her fortress, her home, in a startlingly short time. She would change as much of it by her own hand as she could.

When she could no longer make sensible marks on the page, she addressed the spirit.

 “So…you don’t sleep?”

“Correct,” said Justice. “Do you not?”

“Me? Of course I do.”

“Then why not now, when all your companions slumber?”

“I don’t know, Justice. Reasons, I guess.”

“I see,” Justice said, even though he probably didn’t.

Tonight’s pile of Wardens had formed around Oghren, when he had received a letter, promptly burned it, then drained an entire bottle of Abyssal Peach and collapsed on the rug shortly thereafter. Tabris and Nathaniel had managed to get the heavier plates of armor off him and discretely moved his stash to someplace he wouldn’t find right away the next morning, mutually swearing to have an intervention the moment this business with the Mother and the Architect was over,  and that evening’s sleeping arrangements had germinated from there.

It had become a comfortable thing, sleeping in the atrium by the fire. Seneschal Varel had repeatedly offered to bring in real beds, and Tabris had repeatedly declined. These nights of peace were soap-bubble delicate, and the addition of something as ordered and civilized as a bed would probably ruin it.

Nothing was as good as another warm body at mitigating the yawning darkness that was sleep for Wardens. Tabris remembered, over a year ago, Alistair’s hand on her shoulder the first night in camp. She’d nearly stabbed him that time.

Although, to be fair, Velanna had almost permanently encased Anders in vines the previous night when he’d jerked particularly hard, so perhaps she ought not judge herself too harshly.

Justice was a strange new addition. The spirit didn’t sleep, didn’t even remove the armor Kristoff had been wearing at the time of his death—although, at this stage of corpsiness, it was possible that he simply couldn’t remove it and maintain his form. Sigrun had taken to stuffing  sweet herbs into it just to keep the smell under control. Unfortunately, Sigrun seemed to think everything was a sweet herb, from grass and leaves to actual dirt.

He also glowed softly. It ought to have been eerie, unnatural, but somehow was comforting instead. The blue pulsing glow was nearly hypnotizing, and bright enough to chase away the shadows.

He made a pretty decent night-light. The only drawback was that he would stop anyone attempting to make a nighttime visit to the larder and sternly order them back to ‘bed’. Tabris would really have to get him to stop doing that. New Wardens were always hungry.

“Do mortals usually sleep in groups?” Justice queried. “In Kristoff’s memories, he once slept in the same bed as two sisters and a brother, but only when very young.”

“No, Justice, not usually.” She paused. “I used to sleep with my two cousins, when we were small enough. It was nice.”

“Yes,” Justice said. “It does seem nice.” He sounded oddly wistful. “What is it like? Sleeping?”

Tabris thought sluggishly. “Ideally? Soft and warm, like being enveloped in the comforting sort of darkness. And dreaming, I guess, for most people. Good ones, bad ones, ones about impossible things you’d never see in your daily life.” She paused. “Most people’s daily lives, anyway.”

“It sounds like the Fade.” There was a certain homesickness in the spirit’s voice.

“Oh…yes, I suppose it does,” Tabris, having been to the Fade twice now, lied politely. But homesickness she could understand. She imagined that an afternoon in the alienage would have been equally intolerable, to a spirit of Justice.

Tabris attempted to turn her attention back to her paperwork, but soon gave it up in favor of watching the pulsing blue glow slowly dominate the light in the room as the fire burned lower and lower. She felt her eyelids grow heavy.

“I shall watch, Commander,” the spirit said kindly. “Sleep.”

Tabris sat back in her high-backed chair, her eyes drifting shut. “Thanks, Justice…” she mumbled.

\--

The Commander’s armor clanked as she stomped on ahead through the fields back to the Keep. Her Wardens followed behind her. At the pace she was keeping, in the dead of night illuminated mostly by Justice’s glow and Velanna’s green magelight, it was difficult to do anything but continue to follow her.

They didn’t talk much. The Commander’s anxiety was intense enough to infect all of them thoroughly.

After a while, Sigrun broke the silence. “That,” she said, “was a lot of titties.”

It was so much like something that Oghren would have said that the whole team burst out laughing, even Tabris, who had hardly spoken in hours.

“Not sure if that one or the one in the Deep Roads was worse,” she said, her voice thick and scratchy. “The last one didn’t talk.”

“What about the mouth thing?”

“Hmm…didn’t have the mouth thing. Maybe this one really was worse.”

The attempt at lighthearted banter petered out. The crescent moon rose above.

“Do you think they’re alright?” Sigrun said quietly, breaking the taboo against saying what they were all thinking.

“Of course they are,” Velanna said harshly. “They are Wardens.”

Sigrun closed her eyes. “In death, sacrifice.”

“At least,” the spirit said, “it will have been honorable. Just.”

“ _Stop.”_  The Commander’s fists were clenched. “Let’s just keep going.”

By daybreak, Vigil’s Keep was in sight—still standing, but with smoke rising from within, too much smoke to be from contained campfires. But the walls stood strong, and it was not currently being besieged.

Assuming the darkspawn hadn’t penetrated it easily, and were even now running rampant…

But the gates opened to a Keep damaged, but whole. The wounded lay recovering, and the pyre of the dead seemed mercifully small. But who was on it? Who had they lost?

“Commander! Over here!”

Tabris’s heart leapt into her throat as she caught sight of Anders waving. He kneeled by Seneschal Varel on one of the pallets. She darted over so quickly her weary companions beside her almost thought she’d disappeared.

“Anders,” she breathed, “Seneschal—are you alright? What happened? Who did we lose?”

“I’m well now, Warden-Commander,” Varel said, though he looked terribly pale to her eye.

“Oh, sure, it got a little dicey in the middle of the siege,” Ander said, dusting his hands off and putting them on his hips. “But that’s the benefits of having the world’s greatest spirit healer in your Keep, eh?”

Tabris huffed hollowly. “Wynne might fight you on that one. Where’s everyone else?”

“Oghren’s been hooting and celebrating our victory ever since we drove the ‘spawn off. I’ve no idea where he found the stash, Commander, honest, I didn’t tell him. Last I saw he was on a roof somewhere…someone ought to get him down eventually.”

“And Nathaniel?”

The archer in question appeared seemingly out of nowhere, slinging one arm around Tabris and another around Sigrun and Velanna, grinning. “There you are! Thank the Maker you’re safe.”

“Didn’t I tell you,” Tabris said irritably, smiling helplessly, “not to sneak up on me?”

“You should have seen him sneaking up on the darkspawn, Commander,” Anders chirped, grinning, “I swear, it like he was coming out of the shadows, sticking an arrow through three darkspawn at once.”

Nathaniel scoffed. “You’re exaggerating! Commander, you should have seen _Anders._ He took down what must have been a hundred of them with one spell, all the while acting as combat medic. Now _that_ is impressive.”

“Oh, stop it! And here I thought you didn’t like me.”

“Wow,” Velanna said. “Meanwhile, we fought a talking broodmother whose face split lengthwise.”

“Oh, yikes.” Anders snorted. “Glad I missed that one. Seems like I was put to better use here, anyway.”

“You did well,” Justice said. “All of you did well. We have defended the innocent and served justice.”

Tabris closed her eyes and let out a tentative sigh of relief. “Now that we’re accounted for,” she said, rising, “I have work to do. There are accounts to be made, damages to asses…I have to…” She trailed off, frowning. The whole world seemed a little iridescent. Surely this wasn’t some Fade dream, meant to distract her?

The Warden, as one, crossed their arms sternly and looked at her.

“Surely you aren’t serious, Commander,” Velanna said.

“You look like you haven’t slept in days,” Nathaniel added.

“She has not,” Justice confirmed. “I last perceived the Commander to rest unconsciously a full day before our departure for Amaranthine.”

“That’s three days,” Anders said. “You know that’s dangerous. Sleep deprivation is serious. You can’t just keep drinking that vile bean water, it’ll give you a heart attack.”

“And what would we do without you, Commander?” Sigrun said. “We’d just argue all day, and then darkspawn would overrun Ferelden. Wouldn’t want that, right?”

“But,” Tabris protested weakly, “someone has to do all these things. Someone has to inform the families of the deceased, and overlook cleanup, and get Oghren down from the roof, and—”

“We will do that,” Nathaniel assured, patting her on the shoulder. “You sleep.”

“But—”

“None of that!” Anders said firmly. “I’ve got a sleep spell and I’m not afraid to use it. Or I would be, if I wasn’t out of mana.”

“You shouldn’t let your mana get all the way depleted, Anders, Morrigan used to do that all the time and she’d be disoriented and sick for hours, it can’t be healthy—”

“No mothering!” Sigrun said sternly. “Justice, can you carry her?”

Justice easily, with extremely gentleness, picked their tiny and unprotesting Commander up and headed for the great hall.

“Alright, fine, a few hours,” she groused. “And someone—someone had better write me up a report on everything, so I can read it when I wake up—I swear, I’d better see a report, exactly two hours from now.”

“Sure, Commander. Two hours.”

“Someone had _better_ wake me.”

“Of course, Commander.”

Anders lit a fire in the grate with a snap of his fingers, at which Sigrun giggled in delight. Justice laid the Commander down on the untouched pile of pillows and cushions, and Nathaniel tossed a blanket on her. She was already snoring.

“Someone should probably stay to make sure she doesn’t get up and start yelling at everyone within the hour,” Nathaniel suggested.

Sigrun nodded. “Good idea. We can draw lots and switch off.”

They regarded her for a while. She snored pretty loud for someone so small.

She also, uncharacteristically, looked pretty small, too.

The Wardens looked at each other, feeling a warmth in the room that was not solely from the fire. There would be mourning, later, and celebrating, too, but for now there was a moment of peace.

“Come on,” said Sigrun. “Let’s go get Oghren down from the roof.”

**Author's Note:**

> is it obvious which dragon age game is my favorite yet?  
> idea from [this](http://gayspacejew.tumblr.com/post/115367801113/koskimangusti-an-old-drawing-i-madeum-few-years) lovely fanart i saw about a year back and never got over  
> [my tumblr](http://wombuttress.tumblr.com/)  
> [my oc blog. more tabris here.](http://pile-of-dragon-filth.tumblr.com/tagged/alrian%20tabris)


End file.
